vaultofthearchonfandomcom-20200214-history
126952-f2p-is-coming-what-about-the-unbalanced-population
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I am on Dominion Jabbit, as is the OP, I think the population is fine. In WoW, being the key example, if I recall correctly the horde out number alliance by a large margin. Honestly, quality over quantity. | |} ---- ---- We do...its called a Chua | |} ---- ---- There's a reason why you see a lot of female Aurin.....chua don't have equal footing here. | |} ---- Yea, grown ass men have an obsession with females that are vertically challenged apparently...and like running them around naked while watching anime. I would rather keep that type of player off Dominion side. When I levelled my mordesh medic, I couldn't stand the Aurin players. Have to yet meet one I like, as generalising as that may be, maybe even boarder line racist? Bah, all Exiles have to burn any way. | |} ---- There are numerous ways, though the OP really should have made some suggestions. Dom can get a bonus to leveling experience / money which changes depending on the population difference. Though I am not a fan of more money as it's quite a big advantage but it could be while leveling and stops at 50. There needs to be incentives, but not restrictions or something that makes it unfair to exiles (some games have extra health or whatever) | |} ---- ---- Pretty much this way helps it, you offer rewards to go on the less populated side this means guilds or groups of people that join will go on the other side since it makes their leveling experience easier, especially if they do something as they same experience bonus you get from let's say a a subscription that really has a good effect. | |} ---- Don't worry I will be keeping my medic as a Mordesh too! We will be the last of a dying race if that does happen though. | |} ---- Probably due to the decision to make their gender unidentifiable, then give minimal options to even imply female characters. (giving a pink fur option doesn't count) | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- So much hair in front of the eyes. | |} ---- ---- Oh dear god | |} ---- You, Sir, are a most educational example of the tolerance and pleasantness of the Dominon faction! ;) | |} ---- | |} ---- Presumably when they did that, Mordesh would get their own class unlocks, too! And I guarantee I'd be jumping all over mordesh esper (which was what I had originally wanted to make waaaaay back when we first learned about the fourth exile race with the teaser of the decayed hand). Anyway, I agree with other posters here that the faction divide is a fundamental design flaw when it comes to creating a consistent game experience. Carbine would do well to knock down as many grouping (and housing...) barriers as possible to reduce or eliminate the effects of population imbalance. Though I do think the imbalance is exaggerated by players a bit. Leveling on Dominion side on Entity, I haven't noticed that big of a difference from Exile side. | |} ---- Us proud Dominion citizens will not tolerate rodents...we have a big enough problem with the Chua! Without being crowned the king of off topic, I will say that for the topic, I believe it will work out fine as I mentioned before. One faction will always appeal more, and apparently being a rebel is more appealing than order and civilisation. I am happy with that!! | |} ---- I don't really think it's as bad as it's made out to be either. I mean there is a noticeable population, yes, but when I log on to my Dominion alts it certainly doesn't seem dead to me. (Yes, forum scientists that I know are lurking. These are subjective observations.) | |} ---- Most effective solution? Eliminate the factions. Dual factions is over used, and unhelpful and creates problems. what about all the furries and Chua? | |} ---- you win man. o/ | |} ---- ---- I'd be there on my Mordesh, just the two of us in a sea of Aurin I'm torn, I love the Mordesh and Granok, I love the Exile vibe. I hate the Aurin almost as much as I love those three things put together | |} ---- Currently questing through Dominion-side, and it's definitely much more than just the tutorial that makes it seem that way. xD Not that I'm against a totalitarian empire rife with human rights abuses, rules of engagement violations, and all the social oppression and injustice that goes hand-in-hand with such a society for those who are not at the top or those who have been brainwashed into patriotism. But it definitely isn't a "pretty" picture! | |} ---- Please no. I don't want Aurin on Dominion side | |} ---- ---- ---- It's the falsly associated negativity with the players. "Weaboos" furries RPers, the "Strange" folk of the internets that everyone assumes play Aurin because "LOL KAWAII DESU! LETS BE FRIENDS FOREVER" crap. It's racial profiling in a very oddly assumed manner. Instead of you know taking everyone at face value, and giving everyone a chance to prove or disprove on their own merits... It's just humans being crappy to each other for no reason ohter than just to be pathetic and crappy. | |} ---- Several discussions have come up in the past about what we think they could do to lure new players over to Dominion. Some of the ones i have mentioned are: 1) Modify the arkship story so that there is less of a religious feel, the spy-torture-mondo storyline is more clearly defined, dont portray the Doms as such bad guys, make the exiles arkship storyline seem like they occasionally do "bad" things 2) Instead of all out war between exiles and doms, write in a storyline that changes things from war to uneasy truce. Instead of pvp you rename it wargames and allow doms and exiles to be on the same pvp teams and play vs another team also made up of mixed doms and exiles. And since they are no longer in all out war it is now slightly believable that doms and exiles will group up for instance and raid content 3) Make Artemis Zin a likeable reality tv personality, like a female version of indiana jones...but with cameras that follow her around. Then once that is done make her the face of the Dominion not Malvolio. Malvolio seems to represent order, authority, whatever. And his tone in the flicks and in missions might rub people the wrong way. On the other hand if you make Artemis Zin likeable like Kit Brinny then that might be better. Or maybe make Artemis and that one Radiant Legion guy the face of the Dominion? as long as the Radiant guy isnt all virtues this-virtues that all the time. 4) This might go along with #3, but maybe change the Flicks around as well so that the Dominions are portrayed a little differently. I've said that i think one of the reasons SWTORs empire is popular is because they have villians who are badass like Darth Maul, Boba Fett and Darth Vader. So i think that people play Empire because they *want* to be Boba, Maul or Vader. In WS we have nothing like that except for maybe what people see in flicks? Anyways, the actual mechanics of how they would do the above has been talked about as well. BUT with the upcoming F2P change will they be able to do those at all? will they be able to do *anything* at all to address pop imbalances or worsening of the pop imbalance (if any) when F2P players start coming in? how will the f2p change affect their dev team size and what kinds of projects they can do? | |} ---- That would be me :P But I like my draken gal toons also.. I like em a bit more actually.. Id go for the humans.. but humans on both sides run like they have a problem with their center of balanced and got that bobble head thing going as well as well as looking like they just learned how to walk.. mordesh look like their models walking on the catwalk but in fast motion which isnt as bad as that goofy human skip... | |} ---- ---- Exile Draken please. I WANT SO BAD. | |} ---- OK,, I'll bite.. Some people just have an aversion to Aurin-like characters. These aversions may have come up from past experiences with other games with Aurin-Like characters (Tera-Elin, WoW-blood elves). Past experiences shape the future. The things I've seen on RP servers... oh gawd... | |} ---- Well Elin(Lolicon) are a tad bit different because of their pedophilia appeal but the anime like intention is relatable, but the Blood elves and night elves association is something i can definitely see being relatble due to the elvish nature, but appealing to the same group might be a bit of a stretch. People are just attributing the shallow minded idea of "anime geek/pervert" fandom to Aurin because they're essentially an american version of the Nekomimi/Kenomomimi tropes, as well as the american origin bunnygirl trope, which Aurin were marketed primarily as before the game fully released. All appearances of Aurin in media before the game's major releases were Bunnygirls. Which most people aren't exactly aware is of American in Origin(Thank you PlayBoy and Hugh Heffner). So people are using shallow reasoning to fuel their preconsived prejudice to hate on a particular character type. Personally I'm really sick of being assumed that I'm a furry, and that people say aurin players are furries, when they aren't even furry characters. But they conviniently leave out the ACTUAL Furry race, Chua, which IS full of RPers, and furry fandom. Cherry picking, and prejudice at its finest. | |} ---- ---- I don't think it'd be that big of an ordeal. Post level 45 is the only place you'd really need to change, because post lv 34 EVERYTHING is pretty much right next to each other and the exact same for both exile and dominion. the amount of reworking needed would actually be fairly small. All of the starting zones and levling paths up to level 45 would be able to stay exactly the same. The major change would be that the allied/Neutral Hostile setting would just have to change. A simple Faction check at the creation of the character would simply put it on the other faction. And then elimiting the factions post 45 would be very easy based on that, you'd simply go to the hub for the faction your character is a part of, but the hostile/friendly setting would just be changed. The complexity of the issue is nowhere near as big as people make it out to be. It's an issue of "Work smart, not hard" Reduce the problem down to its smallest fundamental factors. The NPCs don't really act any different to each race of their own faction anyways. Whats one step further to being an Exile Draken as verse to an Exile Granok? In the end the code base would be the biggest problem, not the actual mechanical issue. The issue mechanics wise is very minimal and simple. A few reworks to the post level 44 malgrave, and a factional setting and most of the problems are resolved. You could level as an Exile Draken, or a Dominion Aurin and the difference would be unnoticeable per faction. A vast amount of the game is identical for both factions as it is. | |} ---- And I really like Mechari! The problem is Aurin. Always the cutesy nonsense. | |} ---- ---- ---- If Aion taught me anything regarding population-issues, then it's that you have to act, before it escalates... In WS it's only really an issue for the pvp-servers, once they get revived with the f2p move. You could give the low-pop race certain extra bonuses to make them more appealing. Stuff like 10-20% extra exp, 10% increased prestige/renown/glory etc. Upon reaching lvl 50 you could also give them a free, blue pvp set, just as a little extra bonus... Once the factions are balanced again, you just stop those extra-bonuses. That's how Aion handled the issue and it worked quite o.k. for them... If the race is the deciding factor, you could take a page out of EQ2's mechanics!!! In EQ2 you were able to attain a so called "Petrified Eye" for every race in game (Petrified Ratonga Eye, Petrified High Elf Eye, etc) by doing collection quests. Those Eyes were shape-shifting items, with which you could change into whichever class you wanted to be. That wasn't only fun, but also helped those people, who - later down the road - maybe wanted to be a different race... Or people that wanted to play a race of the opposing faction, while still being able to play with their guild... | |} ---- ---- ---- Dungeon ? Adventures ? Shipmands ? Raid ? Guilds recruitment ? Battleground ? Yes cool Exiles vs Exiles ? If this problem grows up you will see that's a huge problem. | |} ---- No we don't We have faction vs Faction. Exile vs Dominion Exile vs Exile Dominion vs Dominion We do not have mixed faction BGs. We NEED mixed faction BGs where members of different factions get mixed into the same team. Red Vs Blue teams not DvD and EvE and EvD. We need Team vs Team of randomly selected shuffled players of mixed match making. | |} ---- ---- Nope, I just don't like the overcute hippy hugs anything that moves everything is rainbows and sunshine nature. Aurin are evil. they just hide it well :P there are two factions of Aurin on Nexus now who have turned there back on the Exiles and their own Queen, Either that or they have the Queens blessing to be evil terrorists who will kill anyone including there Exile allies. | |} ---- ---- ---- Shouldn't that tell you right there that the aurin are a lot more complicated than you would try to claim in your first sentence? :P I disagree that anymore needs to be done aside from the ability to group up with the opposite faction to run content (particularly instanced content, though I wouldn't object to it in open world, as well). Sure they could put a massive effort into reworking the whole game if they felt like it, but it's not necessary. | |} ---- ---- ---- Basically yes. This is what always happens in any form of fandom. Something hits all the buttons with the 'cute' crowd, and the 'gothy cool' crowd reacts with a whole lot of resentment. All the hate of Aurin here, is pretty much similar to my own bias against elves in... pretty much all fantasy. And I have a similar bias against anything blond... So I get it. I just don't have it here. Which helps me to see how irrational it is when I have it elsewhere... :) On the legitimate side of the coin for this... Having the cute-option be on only one faction contributes a lot to faction imbalance. But the real faction imbalance problem is NOT the Aurin. It is that none of the Dominion races fit Jungian Archetypes well, and most of the Exiles one do... And human beings will ALWAYS flock to things that Jungian Archetypal. And I suspect very few if any of the designers of Wildstar will understand what I just wrote without resorting to wikipedia... which is a big problem... And why this issue keeps popping up in so many present-day video games (and why many of them fail). Evil itself is not a drive-away for players. Witness the Dark Side in Star Wars. Then again the Star Wars Dark Side almost reads like a thesis paper on Jungian psychology and role of the antagonist in the journey of the mythic hero... So much so that in the 70s and 80s, people were getting their PhD's writing about the first 3 movies as Jungian references... and there are even PBS specials on it... WoW's first two expansions so shifted things that people started wondering if they were going to merge the factions in the third expac... Which is kind of why the third expansion, when there was an actual reason for the factions to merge (big monster is eating the planet... time to put aside arguments over what color the towels should be), they instead went to war... So... they could do it... find something that gave a reason for the factions to give up fighting. But... I don't think that's really the issue, as I've noted above. Don't mistake personal preference with popularity. You might be able to find the MMO were humans are not a popular choice, but I could respond with nearly the entire rest of the industry were if humans are a choice, they are the number 1 or 2 choice of players. People complains about Blood Elves a lot, self included. But Humans are still more played in WoW than Blood Elves. http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php http://www.statista.com/statistics/276315/distribution-of-world-of-warcraft-characters-by-race/ Yet nobody says "OMG, those human players and their kinky fandom. They are so weird for wanting to play 'the guy at the office as a death knight'... | |} ---- ---- I think this is the sticker in the "but the ____ are bad, too!" debate. When something morally questionable is going on Exile-side, there's a certain awareness, either built into the player character's dialogue or in the reactions of other NPCs, that it's something you should feel uncomfortable about. Dominion-side, the storytelling portrays morally repugnant behaviors often as wholly justified and even admirable works in the name of the great Dominion empire. I think it's an interesting and logical contrast, given the differences in societal structures. But players are bad about being honest towards things. :p | |} ---- well it should but they keep trying to hug me and cover me in sugar every time I talk to them. I know what those Aurin NPC's are really up to - wanting to hug me all the time. Makes it easier to pick my pocket and knife me in the back! :P | |} ---- Not exactly, but also somewhat yes. Jungian psychology is kind of the 'opposite branch' of psychology from Freudian. Everybody knows Freud because his idea was so demented - that all of human motive boils down to incest-plots and gender envy by women of men... with assorted sexist derogatory memes thrown in... Freud had... problems... It is said that his entire body of work was driven by his inability to get a married woman that was his patient to have an affair with him - so his entire philosophy is basically rejection anger at this one woman. By contrast Carl Jung looks to have been driven by... 'psychedelic experiences, playing with tarot cards, and trying to explain Greek myths without saying 'your mother weird'. :D The Jungian archetypes are common 'iconic aspects' of the myths, legends, and stories in all cultures across the human experience. Many of them are driven by aspects of base biology. They in essence, tell us what we want our stories to be about, who is the hero, and why, what the hero does, how and why... and who, what, and why the opposition exists and does what it does. At the core of Jungian psychology, everything boils down to iconic archetypes. You will see them present in the structure of every popular novel, movie, TV show, story, and game. You will find them in advertising. Politicians will often cart them out as "I'm like this guy, or I am here to protect you from that guy" motiffs. So... "not as interesting" somewhat yes. But Jungian Archetypes try to explain why humanity all over the planet finds the same stuff interesting... and why we've been telling the same stories since we were painting them on the walls of caves... If you don't know Jungian archetypes - well, you can be a developer of a game just fine. That's coding and following directions. But you better not be a designer, and especially not a world or race designer. So when I say a world / race designer needs to know Jungian Archetypes... it is because they need to know what makes stories 'grab people by the emo-button and not let go'... and why. Because if you don't, you end up with a bunch of stuff that sounds cool on the surface because it has cool trappings, but lacks that core emotional 'wammo' factor... The Dominion races don't grab us by the inner-caveman and take us on a buffalo ride... But... even the Aurin on the Exiles do manage it... because they're modeled off of a time-old repeated trope... just not a core-knockoff of that trope. The Aurin are basically a lot like the "fool" card in the Tarot... wide eyed and innocent, representing the hero at the beginning of an epic journey. | |} ---- ---- ---- Mordesh would have been on Dominion, But they hold a grudge that we didn't want for the contagion to spread to the rest of the galaxy so we quarantined them. | |} ---- I know :( Makes me so so sad :( | |} ---- ---- I see where you're coming from but I wouldn't consider WoW nearly the entire rest of the industry. There's an entire Eastern industry not competing with WoW, and I still think it has more to do with classes than the races themselves. I don't know how it is in WoW but every MMO I've played with class locking, humans had more choice. I don't think this disregards the race that Aurin and Humans are the only ones that can be Espers. Esper is a really unique class unlike typical MMO roles like "Archer" and "Mage" and I think it plays a huge role in selection because class directly impacts gameplay first. I like the Mordesh aesthetic the most but I can't be an Esper with it. Warrior and Esper are the only two classes that interest me and I already have a Dominion Warrior so I don't really want to make a second one. Granok only have three choices out of six, which is abysmal. I think if they unrace locked classes (especially since there's no race benefits) the populations would balance out more. | |} ---- I agree, but I just think it would take a lot of work to animate spells and etc with races that could be spent on other areas. Maybe for the F2P transition or a future expansion, if we get that far? | |} ---- Oh I absolutely agree, it would take a lot of work so I'm not expecting any change anytime soon haha. Just trying to provide more possible explanation for population slants. To put it further in perspective, for both sides, Exile and Dominion, for every class, there is 3 race options except Esper. On Exile, Esper is Human and Aurin. On Dominion, Esper is Human and Chua. They essentially locked an entire class to three races out of 7. | |} ---- ---- The (being optimistic) population growth from F2P should lessen the negative impact of faction imbalance anyway. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I don't know either, they look like mammals though. The point is races are different then humans so should we always compare them this closely to humans even though they aren't not human? Your getting my point? Nothing positive or negative just a different point of view. For all we know that Aurin that looks like 12 year old might be 40 years in human years ^^ | |} ---- Yep, I expect that this is the real reason they get so much hate. And I am going to give you a hint for how to stop hating Aurin and love them for the delight that they are: Aurin, like many things in this game, are a light parody, a stereotype taken to absurd extremes for giggles. They're over-the-top hippy hugbunnies by design because it's not supposed to be taken so seriously. For crying out loud, how do people not see the joke? The NPC Aurin go around trying to hug you for mission completion. :lol: You might as well hate on Mordesh for being emo. They're a parody too, by the way. Gothy emo space vampires. They're so tragic they speak in alliteration. If you find hugbunny environmentalism to just ruin the mood, why don't Mordesh do the same every time they speak some somber sonnet of sorrow? And why wouldn't EVERYONE hate on Chua if we're going to take everything at face value? They are unapologetic murderous sociopaths. Should we really take that seriously? Have you ever noticed that the Dominion's invasion of Mikros was so driven by the Draken's adherence to honor that the entire Draken race surrendered after taking a single casualty? Does that sound realistic to you, or like a stereotype taken to an absurd degree? All of these races express their stereotypical characteristics in a way that is deliberately over the top because it's INTENDED to be darkly funny rather than grimdark. If it really makes you upset that Aurin aren't portrayed by the game as Nature's Assassins, you're really missing out on the best of this game's tone and humor. | |} ---- because I like dark/emo/tragic/morbid and don't like hippie/hug/lovefest it is purely personal preference | |} ---- ---- I'm legitimately surprised that Draken got Spellslinger but not engineer. | |} ---- Draken would probably just THROW their bots at people. Or at least bludgeon them over the head with them. | |} ---- ---- Mordesh are poking fun at dark/emo/tragic/morbid, though. You can like the joke even if you hate the concept taken seriously, can't you? :blink: | |} ---- That's my point. Hence the "lore" in quotation marks. I find that reason for the lack of classes as laughable. There has been no real foundation of lore saying why one race can't be something. If there is, I haven't found anything. That is why I always wondered why some races couldn't be things. I would have expected that maybe there would be some story behind why though. Right now it seems like the two races with the least classes (Aurin and Draken) seemed to have been just picked at random. I think that is what I hate the most about the way the race/class combos are. Some of them seem so arbitrary. And I think the stereotypes are damned funny. Especially the Granok, lol. But that gives me more reason to hate them :P (/shakesfist damn hippies!) Actually, yes the Mordesh speaking does get a little annoying. Though I didn't notice that they speak in alliteration. Now that you have pointed that out I might want to punch my toon in the back of the head from now on. And again, it's the over the top style of the game that causes my over the top response. I have yet to be hugged by an Aurin though for completing something. What quest is that? Nope, not at all. No hugs thanks, lol. My point is, and was (maybe rapid typing on my phone didn't do it justice), that some races cause a response from certain people. Hence my labeling of that part of my post "not constructive." I just find the Aurin incredibly annoying compared to the other races. Why? I don't know. Just cause. My point was that that guy going on about Aurin, children, and pedophilia or whatever has his reasons for hating the race. No matter how many people try to point out that his reasons may be flawed it isn't to him and that is all that matters. I do like however, that the one part of my post that seemed to have gotten the most attention was the "not constructive" part, lol. Perhaps too that since I typed it on my phone that the joke was missed on people. I'm neither overly angry at Aurin nor do I need a hug about it (lol). I understand the point of the game and it's humor. It's the primary reason why I have stuck with the game. | |} ---- ---- ---- Anarchy Online was fairly alright, i played on OT on RK2. The population just suddenly grew what meant we dominated tarasque. however pande was shared back when it wasn't instanced. The odd thing was though you gained more experience bonuses the better your side was in keeping bases so the more players you had the easier this was to do. | |} ---- Complain to Lazarin about that. About population imbalance - This isn't GW2's WvW. Pop only matters in cross faction PvP. And open world PvP. LOLWUTROFLMAOWTFBBQ!!11! Yea,... Once a certain level of population has been met I don't think the population imbalance matters in WildStar. Going by a few posts, the dominion side is pretty close to having that level of pop (you can get stuff done there, wait times are just a bit longer than ideal), but that should wash out when F2P hits. | |} ---- I think they're marsupials. So they'd be like a kangaroo or koala. Lore and all that yadda yadda. Edit: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/game/loremageddon/aurin/ click physiology. | |} ---- ---- So, your solution to "hard restrictions forbidding personal preference" is to... have restrictions that forbid personal preference by only allowing "the less populated" faction to be created? | |} ---- Back to Evindra! I wonder if Scott of Awesome will come back if they do... | |} ---- That would be nice :) I really think reopening Evindra would be an excellent move. Rpers do PvP just not as much as no PvPers. Then again, I know quite a few people that would love an RP/PvP server. | |} ---- Oh, just have to re-open those old wounds, you meaniepants. | |} ---- The best kind of server... | |} ---- We're a subset of a subset's subset... Subsetception o_o | |} ---- Sign me up. | |} ---- ---- I absolutely agree with this. I was originally going to make an Exile but couldn't make one I liked. I didn't want to be Dominion because of this portrayal. The theatrical trailers for Dominion too paint them as evil. I think someone mentioned this before and I wish I had remembered who but Exiles and Dominion are not Good vs Evil. They're actually a lot more like Chaos vs Order. When you play Dominion, you see a lot of evil things that Exiles do. Creating and releasing a plague on innocent civilians, participating in torture, poisoning entire ecosystems. On Dominion, when there's someone evil on your side, you're usually pulled into it unknowingly and then allowed to take the person down. There's a lot of morally gray area that gets illustrated with the Dominion that I don't think PR gives justice to. | |} ---- ---- ---- I actually like a few of the "nontraditional" mechari faces (the one with the blank crystal plate and the one with the Geordi-reminiscent visor especially), but the Mechari have a very particular character creation problem: the faces are too unique. There is NO way to make any of the faces look particularly different, especially the less human-looking ones. A mechari with the crystal faceplate is always going to look identical to other mechari with that face option. It's frustrating. | |} ---- I do like these "nontraditional" faces, however I dont think they did them right at least for a female character. I guess the right way for me to get my point acrossed should have been to say that most of the faces looked rushed or they couldnt think of any new faces so just slapped them on there and where like, oh well. If you look at the male faces they look like they thought about them, the females look like a mess. Even the two that I said looked nice could use an update too. Well, maybe not the first one, it is my fav. :P | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I don't know if the males have sexier faces, or if it is a problem with sexyness at all. It's more that all of the faces do not fit with the body. You have a slim figure with an oversexualized metal torso, and then a head that makes no aesthetical sense when combined with those lements unless you pick one of the fish faces. Seriously, we have a face with an eye shaped like a giant heart. How does that fit into the Mechari or Eldan aesthetic? That's something I'd expect to see on a robot made by Exiles. Or Freebots. There was some concept art about Mechari women faces and 80% of them were better than anything we got. The only one they picked from that lot? The one with the horns. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Don't forget any changes to current races they need to do to exile to be fair and that just sets us round to the same spot we're at now. I only thought the female chua was an option because Dominion are one short race/gender compared to Exiles so there is some wiggle room there to make a purely vanity driven move and create the pretty/cute which our side lack without one-upping the Exiles and having them miss out on a cosmetic. Even with dulling our evilness new players who haven't taken the time to research the game won't know the extent of our nature until they have already scrolled through their character options and created a character. We need to some how grab those new players at the character creation level in a way that's it's not going to deprive the exiles. If only the world knew how wonderful it is to play Draken. | |} ---- LOL this always gets me XD but joking aside, I do agree. IT was one of the more notable comments on Chua and while I don't mind "feminine" options or just more in general that aren't just "bushy" and "bushier", I'll also get behind not overtly splitting their gender. Overall I just feel like increasing race/class combos and loosening the faction barriers will just go a long way. | |} ---- ---- There's a reason that three of my six Dominion alts are human. People want something they feel is attractive. The chua psychopathy doesn't help either. For whatever bizzaro reason the only Ekose females we've seen IG are elderly. Not sure if it was fan-art or concept art but young female Ekose would probably get some traction. They aren't a playable race because they're neutral and hard-factioning has wormed its way deep into the engine. | |} ---- LOL THAT PICTURE. The "Add feminine traits to chua" thing really irks me. Feminine how? By human standards? These aren't humans, They aren't even Demi Human, they're some wild angry half rat anthro race, what's feminine to them? Adding feminine human features to them counteracts the point of their race being non human in the first place. | |} ---- If that's aimed at me it's not in reference to wat Chua percieve or acknowledge as feminine or not. In fact I'd go as far as to say that they wouldn't care, but we as outside people looking in would socialy communicate a feature and or option possibly as "faminine" dependant on our culture and varying from individual to individual. Thing is not everyone likes mustaches, beards, etc...and requesting options that aren't those is perfectly fine regardless f whether people see it as masculine or feminine. How they communicate that is something in and of tself, but the fact most people i know try to also state they do not want Chua overtly seperated tells me theyre not trying to push their "humanocentric values" as you put it on an alient race, but rather they're trying to their best ability to communicate what it is they'd like to see in a manner they feel best. I don't expect everyone able to draw or do paint overs so I'm a bit more lenient I guess with reading suggestions like "add more feminine options". There were like 2 people though in older topics that clearly wanted Chua to be overtly female though which I couldn't get behind. For me I want some friggen facial hair for aurin...This is genuinely canon by the way! And in regard to Chua:(#2 was a bad inhouse joke sorry...lol though im not really sorry...) | |} ---- ---- I just thought that's how they all looked ... I've seen the "concept art" you're talking about, but have never seen anything close to that in game, so my assumption was that they are just dimorphic. | |} ---- | |} ---- ---- Yeah, me too. But I've always been a sucker for "unpopular and/or unconventional" character types. Trolls and gnomes in WoW, those little blue dudes in Guild Wars 2, Granoks here ... I just like weird-looking toons. | |} ---- Asura aren't blue, they're brown. And they're awesome. I have an Asura mesmer with the tiniest body type named Aweso Me, so the awesomeness is confirmed. They actually did a great job with the different sexes for Asura, both are somewhat androgynous but you can still tell which is which without resorting to standard humanoid breast/backside/big beefy muscle tropes. | |} ---- I adore the female Ekose! And I love that they reversed the sexual dismophism on them! I'd play a female Ekose 100% And about the Chua, they're like rats or hamsters but they can have mustaches which is something extremely human and extremely male. Our humanocentric values are already being pushed on them. There's nothing wrong with them right now and it's certainly not hard to accept them for what they are, but we could add something typical feminine as well FOR FUN. Because they are a very fun race. I'm not talking about anything drastic. Some pigtails maybe? ;) | |} ---- ---- They still some ugly lookin... things. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Me too! I would LOVE to play Crazy Ekose Gramma Stalker. "Oh, sweetie. That was a silly mistake. I'm going to have to kill you. Close your eyes, now, this won't hurt a bit." | |} ---- ---- well since this is about human perception and a human population playing the game... I have to say i dont care what is considered "HAWT" for a chua... As a female gamer I wanted to and tried to play a chua.. I cant do it. The male animations, Underwear, and lack of customization to look like a girl at least slightly without looking like every other chua in the game that's trying to do the same thing. I gave up. Also not asking for sexy, cute works fine. Or just in general look different than the males. | |} ---- ---- Yes and the armour models take the male version and not ever female versions :( I just make sure my little chua stays in gender neutral clothes, she looks cute! I would just love a couple new hair options and options for different underwear if you so desire. | |} ---- ---- When I started playing City of Heroes years ago, it was all single faction, and many players clamored most insistently for the opportunity to play villains as well as a second faction. But when City of Villains finally was released as a paid expansion to CoH, the complaints were just as loud that it was not villaneous enough... Some people do like to play the bad guys. It can be noticed on these very forums in how many do come here and talk "in character" about "inferior races", "extermination" and "eradication". ;) It's not really fair to change the lore after people have made their decision on what to play. I expect there are people that play e.g Chua just because they are portrayed as murderous psychopaths in the intro movies. Invalidating their decision by changing the lore so that they are harmless, misunderstood carebear-friendly furballs who just temporarily were off their meds - well, as I said that would not be fair to those players. :D | |} ---- Binary factions are not necessary to play a bad guy, in EQ I had a ,gnome wizard that was KOS at every druid ring in the game, I had a friend who's dark elf couldn't even enter his own home city and i had an ogre that was friendly with the high elves and used to sit at the gates of Felwith preaching the gospel of Bob. | |} ----